When you sit down to talk to the quintessentially cool Johnny Depp, you expect a spirited chat about movies, directors and fashion. But Depp answers unexpectedly when quizzed by CRYSTAL on the designer name of his brown leather jacket. “I haven’t named it,” he says playfully, “but I’ve had it for a very long time; it’s ancient!”

The Oscar-nominated 47-year-old actor looks very casual for our interview in a Beverly Hills hotel suite, wearing layers of a blue T-shirt and denim shirt under that jacket, with worn jeans and a bowler hat that has seen better days. He seems genuinely amused when told that many consider him a fashion icon.

“Someone recently sent me a story where they said, ‘it’s official, Johnny Depp should not be allowed to dress himself anymore’,” he recounts with a smile. “It made me so happy and I just thought, ‘maybe they’re right, maybe I have to actually bring someone in to get me dressed every day and it will be one of those situations where you start reaching for something and they say, ‘no Johnny, don’t you dare put those boots on again!’”

Regardless, Depp still manages to make it onto many best-dressed lists when he’s promoting a film or on the red carpet with his partner, French singer Vanessa Paradis – mother of his two children: Lily-Rose, 11, and Jack, 8. And he acknowledges there is a method behind his strangely eclectic madness.

“I’ve always believed the height of fashion was somewhere in the 1920, ‘30s and ‘40s, because there was an elegance in the clothing they wore and therefore an elegance in the way they presented themselves,” he volunteers. “Men wore suits and ties and hats and women were absolutely gorgeous and very much women, so I’ve always felt like I was born in the wrong time and longed for that era, which may explain why I dress like I’m all over the place and it’s a little bit of everywhere, isn’t it?”

The reluctant star has always marched to his own drum it seems, going all the way back to his decision to back away from the mantle of teen idol on the TV show 21 Jump Street in 1990, opting to leave at the height of the show’s popularity and instead satirize that image in the John Waters’ musical film Cry-Baby. Quirky but successful roles have followed in films such as; Benny and Joon, Edward Scissorhands, Don Juan De Marco, Donnie Brasco, Ed Wood, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland.

But ironically Depp’s most beloved and iconic character – not to mention an Academy Award nomination - came not from his small, independent film choices but from the only blockbuster he ever signed on to make, playing Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

“I’ve been lucky in the sense that things just arrived when they arrived,” he insists modestly. “I didn’t sculpt anything, I just did what I did but was fortunate to have people like Tim Burton supporting me and Gore Verbinski trusting me when I told him I wanted to do something different with Jack Sparrow.”

Depp seems to work non-stop and in the past twelve months he’s filmed; The Tourist, Rango (as the voice of the animated title lizard), the final chapter of Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, the upcoming Rum Diary (based on the book by his late friend Hunter S. Thompson) and the upcoming Dark Shadows, a remake of the horror TV series that ran from 1966 to 1971 and will be directed by Tim Burton.

But that doesn’t mean the former musician from a small town in Kentucky doesn’t know how to enjoy life. Depp spends as much time as he can among his large property in the south of France, an island in the Caribbean and a 156-ft yacht named Vajoliroja (Va for Vanessa, Jo for Johnny, Liro for Lily-Rose and Ja for Jack), which can be chartered for $130,000 per week when he’s not sailing the Caribbean or the Mediterranean: another of his favorite vacation adventures.

“I know my island can be perceived as a luxury,” Depp tries to explain, “but it provides me with a simplicity that I cannot get anywhere else; to go somewhere where no one is looking at you and no one is pointing a camera, but you are just there and you can just be.”

So is there anything else the star requires to live life well? “Give me a really good book and a bottle of wine and a nice breezy day, it’s that simple,” he nods, and in that moment you are convinced he really means it.